2017 DEFSA Conference

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Overview

#Decolonise!

The 14th National DEFSA Conference was hosted by Tshwane University of Technology and Inscape Education Group at Freedom Park Pretoria from 27 to 29 September 2017. The theme of the conference #Decolonise! Design educators reflecting on the call for the decolonisation of education, challenged design academics and postgraduate students to scrutinise their educational practice in relation to calls for the decolonisation of higher education.

The initial call for abstracts published on the DEFSA web site and circulated to member institutions resulted in the submission of 64 abstracts of which 40 were accepted. Over the two days of the conference 38 presenters representing 11 institutions presented papers. The final day of the conference was dedicated to a workshop addressing practice-based research. Over the three days 95 delegates and presenters attended the conference and workshop.

Publication of proceedings

All abstracts and papers for the conference and subsequent publication were selected using a double-blind peer review process. The double-blind review process ensured that both authors and reviewers remained anonymous during the process. Prior to the conference the submitted papers were peer reviewed by a group of academics drawn from 16 institutions representing the disciplines of Architecture, Communication Design, Education, Fashion Design, Fine Art, Graphic Design, Jewellery Design, Interior Design, Photography and Visual Studies. A list of the peer reviewers is included in the Conference Proceedings. Authors received feedback in the form of peer review reports and corrections to papers could be implemented for the Conference Proceedings. Ultimately 26 papers have been published in the 14th National DEFSA Conference Proceedings.

Forward

Editors Herman Botes and Susan Giloi

As reflected in the presentations at the DEFSA conference and the papers selected for these proceedings, #Decolonisation offered a fertile theme, concept and related theories for authors to debate and engage with. The calls to decolonise higher education that have emerged over the past few years across the world and especially in South Africa provided academics with a critical point from which to reflect on design education as it has been, and to look forward to what design education might become. Authors provided positive interpretations of how the decolonisation concept could be applied to their own design education practices, as well as institutional practices, in order to strengthen the practice and make it more open to students from diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Through the lens of Decolonisation authors considered curriculum design, pedagogy and assessment as well as the broader role and objectives of higher education structures and systems. For instance, is it enough to educate graduates who are employable in a highly commercial industry, or should graduates have more holistic skills that will equip them to make a positive impact on a world plagued by complex problems. In scrutinising their own educational practice authors clearly illustrate that education is never neutral and that current education systems skew access (both physical and epistemic), accentuate the gap between school and university level design studies, and emphasise employability in a highly commercial industry rather than addressing local needs for entrepreneurship and innovative problem solving. The impact of the colonial past on access and equity as well as the entrenched power dynamics within institutions and faculties are part of the looking back at were design education comes from. Many authors used the Decolonisation of education as an opportunity to offer alternate objectives for design education that align more strongly with community, empathy, social responsibility, emancipation, collaboration and intentional design. With this shift in focus for design education, comes the potential for design students to learn to become ethical, empathetic, critical and moral co-designers rather than mere operators of technology driven by a profit motive. Authors clearly see part of their responsibility in introducing a decolonised curriculum, as an approach that would equip graduates to transform the existing professional design practice to incorporate socially and environmentally responsible objectives.

One theme that was emphasised by the keynote speaker, Pro Dei, and echoed in a number of papers, was the consideration of a variety of forms of knowledge, accommodating multiple perspectives, histories, origins and cultures as opposed to a purely Eurocentric understanding of knowledge. Equally significant was the acknowledgement that it is not sufficient to superficially address these form of knowledge, but educators and students need to build an understanding of African indigenous knowledge systems, the history, origins, traditions, practices and principles that have formed and informed these systems.

Ultimately the DEFSA conference and papers included in the proceedings create a platform for discussions and suggestions that enrich design education and individual practices.

Conference Downloads:

Professor George J. Sefa Dei

Prof Dei is considered by many as one of Canada’s foremost scholars on race and anti-racism studies. He is a widely sought after academic, researcher and community worker, whose professional and academic work has led to many Canadian and international speaking invitations in the US, Europe and Africa.

Currently, he is Professor of Social Justice Education and Director of the Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto and was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2017.

Professor Dei is the 2015 and 2016 Carnegie African Diasporan Fellow. In August 2012, he received the honorary title of Professor Extraordinaire from the School of Education, University of South Africa (Unisa). He received the 2016 Whitworth Award for Educational Research from the Canadian Education Association (CEA), awarded to the Canadian scholar whose research and scholarship have helped shape Canadian national educational policy and practice.

In June 2007, Professor Dei was installed as a traditional chief in Ghana, specifically, as the Gyaasehene of the town of Asokore, Koforidua in the New Juaben Traditional Area of Ghana. His traditional stool name is Nana Adusei Sefa Tweneboah I..

Academic Review

The 2017 DEFSA Conference peer review group have more than 700 years of combined experience in Higher Education. The peer review process for the 14th National DEFSA conference and publication of the conference proceedings followed two phases. In the first phase abstracts were submitted and peer reviewed in a rigorous double-blind peer review process. The peer reviews and reports were verified by the peer review committee and based on the outcomes approved abstracts were accepted into the conference and authors received feedback. In the second phase, full papers were submitted by authors and again went through a double-blind peer review process before the conference. The papers selected and approved through this process, and which were presented at the conference, are then published in this conference proceedings.

The double-blind peer review process ensures that each abstract and paper is reviewed by two people, and that authors and reviewers who are experts in their field, remain anonymous.

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Graphic Design & Visual Art

This paper suggests two possible approaches to researching and conceptualizing aspects of a de-colonized design education for Graphic Design/Visual Communication Design (VCD). Concepts from Post-colonial theory, such as Ngugi wa Thiongo’s decolonization of the mind, Afrocentrism, Homi Bhabha’s hybridity, and appropriation, along with aspects of Social Identity theory are drawn on as means of investigating these approaches.

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Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

Whilst training materials can be effective tools for addressing skills training needs, inherently colonised approaches undermine their anticipated benefit and use. Developers of skills training materials are customarily highly trained professionals, academics and practitioners who are often culturally and otherwise separated from the population for which their materials are intended. As a result, they may overestimate their end-users’ abilities to read and understand textual information effectively.

Axis Mundi: A Pedagogical Exploration of the Decolonising Potential of Mythology

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Design Education Strategy

The postmodern condition is such that economies, globalisation, technologies and societal norms have undergone drastic changes and rapid progressions. All of which has made an undeniable impact on the state and function of contemporary education. In a world now orientated towards a “knowledge-based economy”, it becomes ever more pertinent to grapple with not only how knowledge is defined but also how knowledge is constructed and acquired. The #Decolonise movement makes a call for a knowledge based economy that can be understood as vernacular in nature – knowledge structures that are relatable or relevant to specific regional or cultural origins.

Role with the Students: A Social Constructivist Decolonising Teaching Strategy for Visual Literacy in Fashion Design Programs

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Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

Visual literacy is a core competency required to express and reinforce cultural identity through clothing in the realm of fashion, and is therefore important within the context of decolonising fashion design education. Traditionally, curricula focused on the Euro-centric concept of fashion and accordingly, teaching methods and design products expected from students were mostly applicable within this context. Nevertheless, in South Africa, due to political and educational reform, the demographics of students in fashion design programs in Universities have changed radically over the past two decades to include diverse African and South African cultures.

A Holistic Approach to the Decolonisation of Modules in Sustainable Interior Design

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Interior & Furniture Design

This paper stems from the need to develop and deliver a new module in sustainable interior design (BASD6B2) at a 2nd year level within a new Degree programme at the University of Johannesburg, in 2017. This module’s development however relies on a reflection on another sustainable interior design module (BASD6B1) in the curriculum, offered at a 1st year level. The paper also secondly arises from the national call for the transformation and decolonisation of education programmes in South African tertiary institutions.

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Design Education Strategy

Disciplinary practitioners are challenged to respond urgently and positively to calls to decolonize the academy. There is an expectation that the learning experience as well as the curriculum content needs to be fundamentally reshaped in response to the socio-political-economic realities of this century. To add to the complexity, as daily newscasts confirm, outside the ivory towers there is a growing sense that all is not well with the world, and that there is a need for radical social change.

Student Perceptions on Curriculum Change: Art and Design Theory within a New Bachelor of Visual Arts Degree at Nelson Mandela University.

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Design Education Strategy

This paper seeks to describe changes made to the Visual Studies course at the Nelson Mandela University in light of calls for the decolonisation of curricula, and to assess the impact of these changes by reviewing student responses to the revised curriculum. Using this course as a case study, the paper reflects on students’ experiences of attempts at decolonisation, and seeks to contribute directions for further change.

The Benefits of Incorporating a Decolonised Gaze for Design Education

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Graphic Design & Visual Art

Although calls to decolonise education can be seen as threats to replace existing curricula they can also be seen as an opportunity to scrutinise what is valued in design education and how this might be impacted by calls to decolonise. In this paper, which makes use of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) (Maton 2010a, 2014) to identify the underlying knowledge-knower structure of graphic design assessment, the significance of a specialist gaze for disciplines such as design is outlined. The gaze (Maton 2014) provides knowers with access to the valued knowledge of the discipline and in disciplines such as graphic design is essential to being able to recognise good and bad design and to make the decisions required in the design process.

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Design Education Strategy

Since the mid 1990’s, recurriculation efforts in South Africa have been marked by ideological complexity. Although there is general agreement, post-apartheid, that curriculum should contribute to the construction of a just, equitable and democratic post-apartheid society, the question of how to get there is not straightforward. Broadly speaking, in the new South Africa, curriculum reform has been oriented around a liberal democratic notion of transformation.

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Graphic Design & Visual Art

This paper considers the discrepancies in the visual literacy of students prior to entering spatial design education at a public higher-educational institution. Because the school subjects Visual Arts and Engineering Graphics and Design provide feeder skills to visual literacy, students with exposure to these subjects tend to have higher visual literacy than students who are unlikely to have received exposure to these subjects. This is problematic because Visual Arts and Engineering Graphics and Design are not on offer in all public South African schools.

Design Education as Woke Work

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Design Education Strategy

Ashraf Jamal (2016b, p. 68) regards the work Us and them, the killer of the world by artist Simphiwe Ndzube (2015) as an important signifier of the sociopolitical turmoil in the national psyche which openly erupted in the Rhodes Must Fall campaign in March of that year. Jamal highlights the essential work of interrogating social realities such as inequality on a structural level (which he argues this artwork accomplishes). He also reminds us that the dynamic of 'us and them' does not passively play out in institutions such as universities, invested in sustaining neoliberal interests as they are, but is actively replicated in such institutions.

Decolonising Fashion Education with Athol Fugard's Boesman and Lena

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Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

At undergraduate level, research design and methodology was never a formalised part of the fashion education curriculum. Furthermore, fashion-related modules tend to comprise content predominantly of a Western nature: for example, the ‘history of fashion’ is often presented from a European perspective. In comparison to the vast, multi-disciplinary discourse relating to Western fashion, literature on African fashion is limited, which poses challenges for teaching, learning and curriculum transformation. The call for decolonisation has established a need to narrow this gap.

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Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

Worldwide, a close connection is demonstrated between the clothes worn by people and their cultural or political expression. The subject covering the history of costume taught in many fashion schools or institutions, focuses primarily on Western ideologies with little to no African concepts addressed. This paper explores the availability of a rich history of African costume and textiles that have remained indigenous to many people in most parts of Africa. Some of the examples include the dressing styles of the Maasai of East Africa, Adire textile influences of the Yoruba from West Africa and the Himba and Ndebele from Southern Africa.

Research Sleeping Dogs in Fashion Design Departments of South African Universities: A Decolonisation Obstacle?

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Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

South African universities are exploring strategies to decolonise higher education in response to student’s calls. This manuscript investigates research sleeping dogs in fashion design departments of South African universities. Research sleeping dogs are defined as academic staff who do not have a doctorate qualification, resulting in their inability to fully perform research related activities. Through 2015 data sets sourced from CHET (2017) and Mbatha & Mastamet-Mason (n/d), a benchmark was done of the academic qualifications of staff in fashion design departments of South African universities against national academic qualifications of staff.

Preparing Fashion Students for a Socially Engaged University Project through Zulu Proverbs

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Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

In this paper, I respond to the sub-question about the extent to which design educators can incorporate our context and knowledge of Africa into our design disciplines. I provide an example of a socially-engaged design project from a fashion department at a South African University of Technology (UoT) in which second-year fashion students participated. I argue that this project can be framed as an example of critical citizenship education as forwarded by Johnson and Morris (2010). I also grapple with how a diverse student body can be prepared for a design project that perceives the transformation of society as an end.

Doing Research to Decolonise Research: to Start at the very Beginning.

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Design Education Research

The paper proceeds from the perspective that to decolonise education one needs to start from the position of decolonising research as practice. It proceeds to argue that to attempt to enter the halls of research to decolonise it, one needs, indeed, to decolonise the pursuits of research which are the pursuits of knowledge. A central domain of this pursuit lies in the notion of Africa-centred knowledges. The paper concludes by arguing that designers sit in the cusp or at the forefront of decolonised research endeavours, as they pursue human flourishing (instead of ‘research’) and the search for practical wisdom (or phronesis) instead of knowledge.

A Humanistic Approach to Designing and Assessing Interactive-narrative Based Social Interventions

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Software, UX & Game Design

Decolonising digital media design education requires an investigation of possible techniques that can be taught to designers as a way of approaching interactive design with an emancipatory agenda. Traditionally, interactive-media studies have been taught from a positivist or psychological stance focusing predominantly on theories of human activity and cognition. In this paper I argue that the humanities offer an additional social and ethnographic lens with which to focus on the socio-historic, political and economic context of interactive media artefacts.

Decolonizing Thought Practices with Discussion Approaches for Built Environment Educators

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Architecture & Built Environment

Decolonization is a globally relevant redress of local customs and practices that have remained altered since the times of historic colonial expansion. In South Africa, education forms one such set of customs and practices and the built environment another. Educators in the field of built environments share a responsibility to challenge the accepted norms under colonial systems and find ways in which to facilitate the creation of built environments that reflect the needs and aspirations of their society. Seepe (2004, pp. 160-174) urges us to rethink curriculum functioning, and attitude in the context of African traditions, conscientiously instilling relevance in both the system and the resulting products of that system. ‘In our curricula lies the very identity of our society.

“Community” as the basic architectural unit: rethinking research and practice towards a decolonised education

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Architecture & Built Environment

As a contribution to the decolonisation debate, we need to develop theoretical frameworks that are better suited to diverse contexts, specifically Africa, and we need to elevate local knowledge systems, thinking that originates from the African continent and architectural theory from African scholars. It also demands a shift from documentation (which we tend to do when studying Africa) to interpretation and the development of new theories and new methodologies of research and practice.

Object Biographies as a method for Communication Design students to construct knowledge in the Design Studies classroom

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Media & Communications Design

This paper reports on the use of object biography writing as a method for Communication Design students to construct knowledge in the Design Studies classroom. Students used a guideline constructed around the stages of the birth, life and death of an object to write an object biography on a mass-manufactured object of their own choice with a focus on how the object is used by individuals to construct and express gender identity.

Reinventing design teaching in an era of exponential growth

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Design Education Strategy

Students across the globe are demanding a change in education. In South Africa, the call is for ‘decolonisation’ of higher education. Initially, the call was for free higher education, but students then demanded a significant overhaul of higher education; from the removal of symbols celebrating white supremacy, to a change in the selection criteria and policies to promote applicants on more indicators than academic aptitude alone.

Using Digital Imaging Technology to Decolonize Education in a Museum Context

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Software, UX & Game Design

Museum information and knowledge is persistently understood and communicated according to Eurocentric concepts and provides only a limited account of the experience of the museum environment as place. In this paper we develop a conceptual framework to guide how Digital Imaging Technology (DIT) can change the situation to an inclusive, less hegemonic approach.

Transforming Fashion Education to Design with Intent

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Fashion, Jewellery & Textile Design

Two fundamental shifts are currently evident in design. Firstly, a growing call to integrate research and praxis is evident. Secondly, a call to move fashion design praxis to more relevant and value-adding environmental sustainable and user-centred design approaches is emerging. As such, fashion education should align itself to such shifts.

Reimagining Design Education Through Empathy

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Design Education Strategy

This paper will explore my intervention into decolonising design education as a response to bell hooks’ call for a teaching philosophy that recognises empathy and respect as devices for freedom and sustainable world making. By reflecting on my experience as a recent Masters degree graduate, a newly appointed first-year design lecturer and as a design mentor on a youth training programme I will provide evidence that, in the right learning environment, such a pedagogical approach is possible.